Geographic Factors Sociology Help

Climate and geography are undoubtedly factors in cultural development. Extremes of climate or topography are serious obstacles
to many kinds of cultural development. Great civilizations do not flourish in the frozen Arctic the torrid desert; 'the lofty mountain range' or the tangled forest. People can live in these areas and may develop ingenious means of coping with natural forces, but such areas have not produced great cities or highly developed civilizations. On the other hand, the earliest great civilizations known to the world developed in the lowlands of great river basins. When one speaks of ancient Egypt Mesopotamia, or India, one is talking primarily of the river valleys of the Nile, Euphrates, Tigris, and Indus. Only as met the requirements for an early Civilization (1) fertile land which could support a dense population, with part of the people free to .engage in non agricultural work, and easy transportation to link together a large area. Within the geographic extremes, however, it is hard to find any definite relationship. We can find too many examples of similar cultures in different climates and of different cultures in similar climates. For example, the Hopi and the Navajo have lived for centuries, in the same area of the American Southwest. The Hopi are agriculturalists living in blocks of adobe. apartment houses. The Navajo are deep-herding nomads living in smooth domed stick-and-mud houses. Their religion and family systems are very different. Dozens of such examples show that geographic environment sets certain limits but does not dictate any particular type of social life: